Achieving Better Buy InHow to get your users, staff, and board to use your new technology product

Jane Hanley, AGH StrategiesCiviCRM User Summit, 2015

Why technology fails at organizations

Its the wrong product Not enough time or money was invested in

launching the product You chose the wrong vendor to implement

your product The right people were not brought into the

decision making process until it was too late Not enough support was given post launch

Why things go wrong A lot of support for the project at the beginning and almost no

attention paid to the project after launch

A lot of people involved in the project planning but only management involved in the implementation

Initial support from higher up but they lose interest after a vendor is chosen

Involving management mid implementation

Management and end users have different goals and expectations

Organization's priorities change

Vendor does not understand your workflow or your organization

Staff is not trained post launch

Rely too much on your vendor for day to day work

Before Choosing a Product Figure out the goals of the product Figure out who will be working with it day to day Figure out who will be affected by a product being

implemented, even if they are not using it themselves

Come up with a realistic time line and build time in for training and testing

Come up with a realistic budget, talk to people at organizations who have done something similar recently

Before Choosing a Vendor Check their references, make sure they have worked with your

technology product before

Figure out who your contact will be

Hearing no is okay

Share your timeline, goals, budget, and every piece of information about your day-to-day operations you can come up with

Ask them about training and documentation

Let people from different parts of the organization review their proposals

Don't let budget be the most important reason you choose a particular vendor

Before Abandoning Your Product Talk about what isn't working – be

specific Have you told your stakeholders

what's in it for them? Compare what you're using with

what you think will solve all your problems – see if you can find anyone who has made the same transition

Know Your Audience Who is interacting with your technology product

Donors Staff Board Event registrants Who else

How are they interacting?

Data entry Reports Emails Registering, donating, managing their info

Define Your Goals What problems is this product going

to solve? What new opportunities will this

create? How will this impact your mission Consider using a scorecard with

predefined goals

During Implementation Figure out a training and

documentation plan and time line Make it easy to users to find help Don't let your vendor do

everything for you, check in regularly, be agile

Post Implementation/Pre Launch Enforce your training and

documentation plan Give people from a variety of

positions and use cases the ability to test things out

Develop your internal champions and gurus

Later... Think about whether the goals you

set earlier have been achieved Ask for feedback regularly, find out

what the pain points are early Update documentation as needed Ask for feedback on the

documentation that has been created

Questions?

Jane Hanley, AGH StrategiesDirector of Training & Support

jane@aghstrategies.com@jane__sez

https://aghstrategies.com